My clients, and my kids, have been told that there are four ways that they can be perceived as lying:

Dishonesty by commission — literally saying black is white.

Dishonesty by omission — leaving important information out of your communications.

Dishonesty by understatement for the purpose of obfuscating the truth.

Dishonesty by overstatement for the purpose of obfuscating the truth.

We have all been witnessing — first in the Church’s initial communication and handling of sexual abuses by priests in the United States, now by the Church’s bungling of what seems to be an even worse situation in Europe — dishonesty in all four categories.

There was a time when, to the vast majority of Christians, not just to Catholics, the word of the Vatican equated to the word of God, and even non-Christians had great respect for most statements coming out of the Vactican. But in the 21st Century, “consumers” are too savvy to believe that God directed his representatives on Earth to lie. The Vatican must put down the proverbial shovel before it digs its way to a place much less inviting than Heaven.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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I was not raised in the Catholic church. However, there has been such a plethora of damning evidence for so long that I have had trouble understanding WHY it’s taken so long to do something about this situation.
Seems like a no-brainer. If once a pedophile/molester – what difference in their behavior is a change of location going to do? And what could be in the least “God” like in that perverted practice that ruins young lives and in the denial of addressing it by those in positions of power and responsibility?

I’ll be posting an article I wrote, soon, called “How Much Pain Does it Take?” It addresses some of the reasons why, in my opinion, people who are supposedly reasonable and intelligent don’t take action to prevent crises from getting worse.

Meet this Blog’s Co-Hosts

Jonathan L. Bernstein, president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc. has more than 25 years of experience in all aspects of crisis management – crisis response, vulnerability assessment, planning, training and simulations.[Read more ...]

Erik Bernstein is vice president of Bernstein Crisis Management. Erik started with BCM in 2009 as a writer and subsequently became social media manager for the consultancy itself as well as for a number of BCM clients before moving to the VP position.
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